Islamic finance is the sector of finance offering products compliant with the Islamic moral principles, or Sharia. In Islam, interest-based products and transactions are prohibited in an effort to prevent usury, or Riba, and thus interest and speculation are replaced with Islamic risk-sharing products. These products strike great resemblance to conventional Western banking while reinforcing that money itself has no intrinsic value.
During the mid-1900s, the rise of Western banks in countries with Muslim majority called for regulatory bodies to apply Islamic traditions and facilitate the co-existence of traditional and Islamic banking. These supervisory boards are composed of different jurists, mainly religious scholars trained to consult on financial matters such as charity contributions, operations verification, and product certification. On a global scale, there are two supervisory bodies for Islamic finance: the Bahrain-based Accounting and Auditing Organization for Islamic Financial Institutions (AAOIFI) and the Malaysian Islamic Financial Services Board (IFSB). Even some non-Islamic countries, like the United Kingdom, started offering Islamic financial products to attract an emerging market of investors.
Nowadays, Islamic finance is worth more than four trillion U.S. dollars. Some of the widely traded contracts of Islamic finance are:
- Murabaha, or cost plus selling: Instead of taking out an interest-bearing loan, the bank will buy the asset and will sell it back to the customer at a higher rate which will be paid in installments.
- Mudarabah, or profit share: It consists of the bank, which will provide 100% of the capital for the business creation, while the customer provides labor and management.
- Sukuk, or Islamic bonds: The primary difference between Sukuk and traditional bonds is that they involve a direction asset ownership instead of being interest-bearing debt obligations. This makes Sukuk asset-based rather than asset-backed.
According to S&P Global in their Islamic Finance Outlook 2022 report, higher digitalization and fintech collaboration will help the industry’s open new avenues for growth and will make the industry more resilient in volatile times. The industry’s assets are projected to reach up to six trillion U.S. dollars in value by 2026. At Sequel, we are no foreigners to Islamic finance, and we pride ourselves for being a key player in fintech integration especially in the GCC region, promoting healthy growth and client satisfaction.